MOBILE, Alabama – It’s been a month. Welcome to Tornado Alley on Dauphin Street, where the ghastly reminders of the Dec. 25 EF-2 storm are a daily sight for commuters and Murphy High School students.

The shattered home of Anne and Hays Zieman on the corner of Dauphin and North Carlen streets is probably the most dramatic example of what a direct hit from an EF-2 tornado can do. Anne Zieman was at home with her dogs when it hit, but wasn’t hurt. Now, what's left will be bulldozed, she said. They will likely rebuild, but haven’t finalized their plans.

The home was built in the 1940s by the owners of Paterson Lumber Co., which was a few blocks away on Dauphin, near the intersection on North Mobile Street. The Ziemans have lived there for 17 years. The day after the storm, family and friends spent hours salvaging everything they owned from the rubble.

Anne Zieman said she wanted to put to rest a rumor that they'd found treasure hidden in the walls, but also said the destruction made it possible for them to rescue a large, antique safe in the basement, which was inaccessible before.

Her main concern is for her neighbors who were similarly affected, but don’t have insurance. “It’s amazing what we don’t need,” she said. “What we do need is God. We can survive on nothing. It’s not what you have – your possessions – it’s the people who care about you and love you. … I could do without all of this stuff I’m doing without right now.”

Next door to the Ziemans is the home of Dr. Carl and Betty Booth, who have lived there for 47 years and are longtime members of Trinity Episcopal Church. The house was built in the 1920s. “The family is looking forward to the restoration and refurbishing of the house and property,” said Joe Booth, Carl’s nephew, who makes daily visits to work on the interior.

“I’m helping him out with cleanups and all restoration efforts,” said Booth, who recently restored his house on Houston Street, which has been in his family for 100 years. He believes it will take about three months to finish the repairs.

His aunt and uncle’s roof and garage were extensively damaged, but it wasn’t as bad as when Hurricane Frederic hit in 1979 and “put a pecan tree in the house,” Joe Booth said. The Dauphin Street corridor and surrounding neighborhoods used to be a pecan orchard, but many of those trees were lost when Frederic came through. “If we can survive Frederic, we can survive anything,” he added.

The congregation of Trinity Episcopal, which lost the front wall of the parish hall in the storm, is now meeting for services at All Saints Episcopal on the corner of Ann and Government streets. Services are at 8 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. The property is fenced off to the public, but with a cheery banner out front: “We Will Be Back!” The church has a relief fund at its website, www.trinitychurchmobile.org.

Across from Trinity at 1853 Dauphin St., Jane and David Dukes were having a family Christmas when the storm hit. Their front porch collapsed. The house, built in 1910, is the family home of Jane Hand Dukes, the daughter of Judge William Brevard Hand. Her son and daughter-in-law, Witt and Ashley Dukes, live in the house next to it, 1855 Dauphin, which also took a hard hit.

"It was crazy right after it happened," Jane Dukes said, with about 12 family members trying to get outside. The house lost parts of the roof and quite a few windows, along with many trees. They're facing six to seven months of repairs, she said.

The stately mansion at 1835 Dauphin that is home to William and Michele Nolen-Schmidt has withstood 100 years of Gulf Coast storms. But the tornado ripped off its chimneys, lifted up the front overhang and knocked its imposing columns from their pedestals.

The Nolen-Schmidts live and work in the home and the two buildings behind it, Nolen-Schmidt Gallery & Studios, all of which are undergoing extensive repairs.

“We take it a day at a time,” Michele Nolen-Schmidt said. “That’s the only way I think anybody’s able to deal with it.”

She and her children, Walter and Kiki, were in the main house when the storm hit. William was in the studio. “We had finished Christmas dinner and put up the dishes, which was a good thing because (later) I found the drain board under a chair,” she said. “We heard the tornado sirens go off. The storm that came through five days earlier was on my birthday, so that was on my radar.”

When she looked into the back yard, she could see the storm coming. “It was a dark, low cloud to the east. I heard the noise, like a jet engine.” The family huddled in a tiny bathroom inside the back door. “The noise -- there’s no way to describe it,” she said. “Like tanks going over the house, constant rumbling – extremely loud. I never felt the house shake, but I could feel the pressure going in and out, like an accordion. My ears started popping.”

After the noise died down, the family headed outside to view the damage. “It was like a bomb went off,” she said. “I was in this house when Frederic went through and that’s the only thing we can compare it to.”

Firefighters were on the scene within minutes, going door to door, she said, and there was a strong smell of gas from the broken line at the Joe Jefferson Playhouse, which is right behind their studio and gallery. “It’s so hard for me to comprehend -- that amount of destruction in that time frame,” Nolen-Schmidt said.

Now, the Nolen-Schmidts are coping with a long punchlist of work ahead: roof, ceilings, windows, insulation, cracked walls, “crazy things like pieces of glass that flew across the room and embedded in the wall.” Many of the pretty trees on the property were destroyed, including a live oak that they had planted when Kiki was a baby. “We lost a lot of heirloom-type vegetation,” including cedars that had been there at least 40 years, Nolen-Schmidt said.

In the 1950s, the house was a nursery, the Federated Garden Center. It was also used for wedding receptions and other parties. Over the years, people have stopped by to share their memories of good times under its roof, Nolen-Schmidt said, including a couple who had held their wedding reception there and were now celebrating their 50th anniversary. In that sense, the mansion belongs to all of Mobile, she said. “It’s a beautiful house, and definitely a landmark … we want to preserve that.”

Walter and Kiki Nolen-Schmidt both graduated from Murphy High School, and on the day after the storm, “I must have had 25 young adults and older teenagers come to my house who went to high school and college with my children,” Nolen-Schmidt said. “It really was very moving to me to see how much they cared about my kids and what had happened to us.”

And with all things considered, the house has held up pretty well, Nolen-Schmidt said. “It’s come through a fire, hurricanes and now a tornado. That says a lot to how well it was built.”